Log24

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Frenkel on “the Rashomon Effect”

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:44 pm

Earlier in Frenkel's above opinion piece —

"What this research implies is that we are not just hearing
different 'stories' about the electron, one of which may be
true. Rather, there is one true story, but it has many facets,
seemingly in contradiction, just like in 'Rashomon.' 
There is really no escape from the mysterious — some
might say, mystical — nature of the quantum world."

See also a recent New Yorker  version of the fashionable cocktail-party
phrase "the Rashomon effect."

For a different approach to the dictum "there is one true story, but
it has many facets," see . . .

"Read something that means something."
New Yorker  motto

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

For Times Square Church

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:55 am

The Times  version —

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Math’s Big Lies

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:00 am

Two mathematicians, Barry Mazur and Edward Frenkel,
have, for rhetorical effect, badly misrepresented the
history of some basic fields of mathematics. Mazur and
Frenkel like to emphasize the importance of new 
research by claiming that it connects fields that previously
had no known connection— when, in fact, the fields were
known to be connected since at least the nineteenth century.

For Mazur, see The Proof and the Lie; for Frenkel, see posts
tagged Frenkel-Metaphors.

See also a story and video on Robert Langlands from the
Toronto Star  on March 27, 2015:

"His conjectures are called functoriality and
reciprocity. They made it possible to link up
three branches of math: harmonic analysis,
number theory, and geometry. 

To mathematicians, this is mind-blowing stuff
because these branches have nothing to do
with each other."

For a much earlier link between these three fields, see the essay
"Why Pi Matters" published in The New Yorker  last month.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Mathematics for Jews*

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 pm

Headline at the Toronto Star  on Friday, March 27, 2015:

Robert Langlands: The Canadian
who reinvented mathematics

“He’s like a modern-day Einstein.”

Apparently, unlike God, Langlands würfelt .

* See also Blockheads  in this journal.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Frenkel’s Rashomon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:02 pm

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Putting the Con in Conceptual

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 am

Edward Frenkel in The New York Times ,
in an op-ed piece dated Feb. 20, 2015 —

"… I suggest that we regard the paradoxes
of quantum physics as a metaphor for
the unknown infinite possibilities
of our own existence. This is poignantly
and elegantly expressed in the Vedas:
'As is the atom, so is the universe;
as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm;
as is the human body, so is the cosmic body;
as is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.'"

The Times : "Edward Frenkel, a professor of mathematics
at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of
Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality. "

See also Con Vocation (Sept. 2, 2014).

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Mathematics as Religion

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 pm

On Edward Frenkel:

"Math is, for him, 'a narrative' of human endeavor
that shares much with art, music and religion.

For instance, he describes new mathematical insights
as 'revelations,' and the utterly unchanging truths of
mathematical ideas are 'nothing short of a miracle.'"

Uh-huh.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Greene on Mathematics

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:20 am

A reply in the March 8 LA Times  to the opinion piece by Edward Frenkel discussed here yesterday

"It is completely wrong to imply that Euclidean geometry is somehow not interesting because it is old. Actually, Euclidean geometry appeals not only in its intrinsic mathematical nature but also in its power to explain what one sees around one spatially.

If this subject is taught badly, like any other subject it can seem tedious. If it is taught well, it arouses the sense of the intellectual power and attractiveness of mathematical thought as well as or better than anything else that can be presented to a beginner.

One of the points of mathematics educationally is to introduce students to a subject in which precise thought exists. They are surrounded by a world of baloney versions of science. Mathematics is where they find out that really precise thought exists. The last thing they need is to be given the impression that mathematics is another subject in which learning a few buzzwords is the whole show.

Modern mathematics can exist only because older mathematics has existed.

Robert E. Greene

Pacific Palisades

The writer is a professor of mathematics at UCLA."

And several other things too.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Whitewashing Picasso

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:30 pm

A search today for Edward Frenkel's phrase
"portals into the magic world of modern math"
leads to a reprint of his March 2 LA Times  opinion piece
in The Salem News —

IMAGE- Edward Frenkel in The Salem News

To hell with Picasso, I'll take Tom Sawyer.

Quotation

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:09 pm

Edward Frenkel in a vulgar and stupid
LA Times  opinion piece, March 2, 2014 —

"In the words of the great mathematician Henri Poincare, mathematics is valuable because 'in binding together elements long-known but heretofore scattered and appearing unrelated to one another, it suddenly brings order where there reigned apparent chaos.' "

My attempts to find the source of these alleged words of Poincaré were fruitless.* Others may have better luck.

The search for Poincaré's words did, however, yield the following passage —

HENRI POINCARÉ
THE FUTURE OF MATHEMATICS

If a new result is to have any value, it must unite elements long since known, but till then scattered and seemingly foreign to each other, and suddenly introduce order where the appearance of disorder reigned. Then it enables us to see at a glance each of these elements in the place it occupies in the whole. Not only is the new fact valuable on its own account, but it alone gives a value to the old facts it unites. Our mind is frail as our senses are; it would lose itself in the complexity of the world if that complexity were not harmonious; like the short-sighted, it would only see the details, and would be obliged to forget each of these details before examining the next, because it would- be incapable of taking in the whole. The only facts worthy of our attention are those which introduce order into this complexity and so make it accessible to us.

Mathematicians attach a great importance to the elegance of their methods and of their results, and this is not mere dilettantism. What is it that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution or a demonstration? It is the harmony of the different parts, their symmetry, and their happy adjustment; it is, in a word, all that introduces order, all that gives them unity, that enables us to obtain a clear comprehension of the whole as well as of the parts. But that is also precisely what causes it to give a large return; and in fact the more we see this whole clearly and at a single glance, the better we shall perceive the analogies with other neighbouring objects, and consequently the better chance we shall have of guessing the possible generalizations. Elegance may result from the feeling of surprise caused by the unlooked-for occurrence together of objects not habitually associated. In this, again, it is fruitful, since it thus discloses relations till then unrecognized. It is also fruitful even when it only results from the contrast between the simplicity of the means and the complexity of the problem presented, for it then causes us to reflect on the reason for this contrast, and generally shows us that this reason is not chance, but is to be found in some unsuspected law. ….

HENRI POINCARÉ
L'AVENIR DES MATHÉMATIQUES

Si un résultat nouveau a du prix, c'est quand en reliant des éléments connus depuis longtemps, mais jusque-là épars et paraissant étrangers les uns aux autres, il introduit subitement l'ordre là où régnait l'apparence du désordre. Il nous permet alors de voir d'un coup d'œil chacun de ces éléments et la place qu'il occupe dans l'ensemble. Ce fait nouveau non-seulement est précieux par lui-même, mais lui seul donne leur valeur à tous les faits anciens qu'il relie. Notre esprit est infirme comme le sont nos sens; il se perdrait dans la complexité du monde si cette complexité n'était harmonieuse, il n'en verrait que les détails à la façon d'un myope et il serait forcé d'oublier chacun de ces détails avant d'examiner le suivant, parce qu'il serait incapable de tout embrasser. Les seuls faits dignes de notre attention sont ceux qui introduisent de l'ordre dans cette complexité et la rendent ainsi accessible.

Les mathématiciens attachent une grande importance à l'élégance de leurs mé-thodes et de leurs résultats; ce n'est pas là du pur dilettantisme. Qu'est ce qui nous donne en effet dans une solution, dans une démonstration, le sentiment de l'élégance? C'est l'harmonie des diverses parties, leur symétrie, leur heureux balancement; c'est en un mot tout ce qui y met de l'ordre, tout ce qui leur donne de l'unité, ce qui nous permet par conséquent d'y voir clair et d'en comprendre l'ensemble en même temps que les détails. Mais précisément, c'est là en même temps ce qui lui donne un grand rendement ; en effet, plus nous verrons cet ensemble clairement et d'un seul coup d'œil, mieux nous apercevrons ses analogies avec d'autres objets voisins, plus par conséquent nous aurons de chances de deviner les généralisations possibles. L'élé-gance peut provenir du sentiment de l'imprévu par la rencontre inattendue d'objets qu'on n'est pas accoutumé à rapprocher; là encore elle est féconde, puisqu'elle nous dévoile ainsi des parentés jusque-là méconnues; elle est féconde même quand elle ne résulte que du contraste entre la simplicité des moyens et la complexité du problème posé ; elle nous fait alors réfléchir à la raison de ce contraste et le plus souvent elle nous fait voir que cette raison n'est pas le hasard et qu'elle se trouve dans quelque loi insoupçonnée. ….

* Update of 1:44 PM ET March 14 — A further search, for "it suddenly brings order," brought order. Words very close to Frenkel's quotation appear in a version of Poincaré's "Future of Mathematics" from a 1909 Smithsonian report

"If a new result has value it is when, by binding together long-known elements, until now scattered and appearing unrelated to each other, it suddenly brings order where there reigned apparent disorder."

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Sacred and Profane

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:00 am

(Continued from yesterday afternoon)

This journal on December 12th, 2009

Rothstein's 'Emblems of Mind,' 1995, cover illustrations by Pinturicchio from Vatican

Cover illustration— Arithmetic and Music,
Borgia Apartments, The Vatican

Compare and contrast with Frenkel at the Fields Institute

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Blackboard Jungle

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:07 am

Continued from Field of Dreams, Jan. 20, 2013.

IMAGE- Richard Kiley in 'Blackboard Jungle,' with grids and broken records

That post mentioned the March 2011 AMS Notices ,
an issue on mathematics education.

In that issue was an interview with Abel Prize winner
John Tate done in Oslo on May 25, 2010, the day
he was awarded the prize. From the interview—

Research Contributions

Raussen and Skau: This brings us to the next
topic: Your Ph.D. thesis from 1950, when you were
twenty-five years old. It has been extensively cited
in the literature under the sobriquet “Tate’s thesis”.
Several mathematicians have described your thesis
as unsurpassable in conciseness and lucidity and as
representing a watershed in the study of number
fields. Could you tell us what was so novel and fruitful
in your thesis?

Tate: Well, first of all, it was not a new result, except
perhaps for some local aspects. The big global
theorem had been proved around 1920 by the
great German mathematician Erich Hecke, namely
​the fact that all L -functions of number fields,
abelian -functions, generalizations of Dirichlet’s
L -functions, have an analytic continuation
throughout the plane with a functional equation
of the expected type. In the course of proving
it Hecke saw that his proof even applied to a new
kind of L -function, the so-called L -functions with
Grössencharacter. Artin suggested to me that one
might prove Hecke’s theorem using abstract
harmonic analysis on what is now called the adele
ring, treating all places of the field equally, instead
of using classical Fourier analysis at the archimedian 
places and finite Fourier analysis with congruences 
at the p -adic places as Hecke had done. I think I did
a good job —it might even have been lucid and
concise!—but in a way it was just a wonderful 
exercise to carry out this idea. And it was also in the
air. So often there is a time in mathematics for 
something to be done. My thesis is an example. 
Iwasawa would have done it had I not.

[For a different perspective on the highlighted areas of
mathematics, see recent remarks by Edward Frenkel.]

"So often there is a time in mathematics for something to be done."

— John Tate in Oslo on May 25, 2010.

See also this journal on May 25, 2010, as well as
Galois Groups and Harmonic Analysis on Nov. 24, 2013.

Fields

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:20 am

Edward Frenkel recently claimed for Robert Langlands
the discovery of a link between two "totally different"
fields of mathematics— number theory and harmonic analysis.
He implied that before Langlands, no relationship between
these fields was known.

See his recent book, and his lecture at the Fields Institute
in Toronto on October 24, 2013.

Meanwhile, in this journal on that date, two math-related
quotations for Stephen King, author of Doctor Sleep

"Danvers is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, 
United States, located on the Danvers River near the
northeastern coast of Massachusetts. Originally known
as Salem Village, the town is most widely known for its
association with the 1692 Salem witch trials. It is also
known for the Danvers State Hospital, one of the state's
19th-century psychiatric hospitals, which was located here." 

"The summer's gone and all the roses fallin' "

For those who prefer their mathematics presented as fact, not fiction—

(Click for a larger image.)

The arrows in the figure at the right are an attempt to say visually that 
the diamond theorem is related to various fields of mathematics.
There is no claim that prior to the theorem, these fields were not  related.

See also Scott Carnahan on arrow diagrams, and Mathematical Imagery.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Edward Frenkel, Your Order Is Ready.

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

Backstory: Frenkel's Metaphors and Waitressing for Godot.

In a recent vulgarized presentation of the Langlands program,
Edward Frenkel implied that number theory and harmonic
analysis were, before Langlands came along, quite unrelated.

This is false.

"If we think of different fields of mathematics as continents,
then number theory would be like North America and
harmonic analysis like Europe." 

Edward Frenkel, Love and Math , 2013

For a discussion of pre-Langlands connections between 
these "continents," see

Ding!

"Fourier Analysis in Number Theory, my senior thesis, under the advisory of Patrick Gallagher.

This thesis contains no original research, but is instead a compilation of results from analytic
number theory that involve Fourier analysis. These include quadratic reciprocity (one of 200+
published proofs), Dirichlet's theorem on primes in arithmetic progression, and Weyl's criterion.
There is also a function field analogue of Fermat's Last Theorem. The presentation of the
material is completely self-contained."

Shanshan Ding, University of Pennsylvania graduate student

Monday, November 25, 2013

Pythagoras Wannabe*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:10 am

A scholium on the link to Pythagoras
in this morning's previous post Figurate Numbers:

For related number mysticism, see Chapter 8, "Magic Numbers,"
in Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
by Edward Frenkel (Basic Books, Oct. 1, 2013).

(Click for clearer image.)

See also Frenkel's Metaphors in this journal. 

* The wannabe of the title is of course not Langlands, but Frenkel.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Galois Groups and Harmonic Analysis

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:29 am

“In 1967, he [Langlands] came up with revolutionary
insights tying together the theory of Galois groups
and another area of mathematics called harmonic
analysis. These two areas, which seem light years
apart
, turned out to be closely related.”

— Edward Frenkel, Love and Math, 2013

“Class field theory expresses Galois groups of
abelian extensions of a number field F
in terms of harmonic analysis on the
multiplicative group of [a] locally compact
topological ring, the adèle ring, attached to F.”

— Michael Harris in a description of a Princeton
mathematics department talk of October 2012

Related material: a Saturday evening post.

See also Wikipedia on the history of class field theory.
For greater depth, see Tate’s [1950] thesis and the book
Fourier Analysis on Number Fields .

Logic for Jews*

The search for 1984 at the end of last evening’s post
suggests the following Sunday meditation.

My own contribution to this genre—

A triangle-decomposition result from 1984:

American Mathematical Monthly ,  June-July 1984, p. 382

MISCELLANEA, 129

Triangles are square

“Every triangle consists of n  congruent copies of itself”
is true if and only if  is a square. (The proof is trivial.)
— Steven H. Cullinane

The Orwell slogans are false. My own is not.

* The “for Jews” of the title applies to some readers of Edward Frenkel.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Light Years Apart?

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:00 pm

From a recent attempt to vulgarize the Langlands program:

“Galois’ work is a great example of the power of a mathematical insight….

And then, 150 years later, Langlands took these ideas much farther. In 1967, he came up with revolutionary insights tying together the theory of Galois groups and another area of mathematics called harmonic analysis. These two areas, which seem light years apart, turned out to be closely related.

— Frenkel, Edward (2013-10-01).
Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality
(p. 78, Basic Books, Kindle Edition)

(Links to related Wikipedia articles have been added.)

Wikipedia on the Langlands program

The starting point of the program may be seen as Emil Artin’s reciprocity law [1924-1930], which generalizes quadratic reciprocity. The Artin reciprocity law applies to a Galois extension of algebraic number fields whose Galois group is abelian, assigns L-functions to the one-dimensional representations of this Galois group; and states that these L-functions are identical to certain Dirichlet L-series or more general series (that is, certain analogues of the Riemann zeta function) constructed from Hecke characters. The precise correspondence between these different kinds of L-functions constitutes Artin’s reciprocity law.

For non-abelian Galois groups and higher-dimensional representations of them, one can still define L-functions in a natural way: Artin L-functions.

The insight of Langlands was to find the proper generalization of Dirichlet L-functions, which would allow the formulation of Artin’s statement in this more general setting.

From “An Elementary Introduction to the Langlands Program,” by Stephen Gelbart (Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, New Series , Vol. 10, No. 2, April 1984, pp. 177-219)

On page 194:

“The use of group representations in systematizing and resolving diverse mathematical problems is certainly not new, and the subject has been ably surveyed in several recent articles, notably [ Gross and Mackey ]. The reader is strongly urged to consult these articles, especially for their reformulation of harmonic analysis as a chapter in the theory of group representations.

In harmonic analysis, as well as in the theory of automorphic forms, the fundamental example of a (unitary) representation is the so-called ‘right regular’ representation of G….

Our interest here is in the role representation theory has played in the theory of automorphic forms.* We focus on two separate developments, both of which are eventually synthesized in the Langlands program, and both of which derive from the original contributions of Hecke already described.”

Gross ]  K. I. Gross, On the evolution of non-commutative harmonic analysis . Amer. Math. Monthly 85 (1978), 525-548.

Mackey ]  G. Mackey, Harmonic analysis as the exploitation of symmetry—a historical survey . Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 3 (1980), 543-698.

* A link to a related Math Overflow article has been added.

In 2011, Frenkel published a commentary in the A.M.S. Bulletin  
on Gelbart’s Langlands article. The commentary, written for
a mathematically sophisticated audience, lacks the bold
(and misleading) “light years apart” rhetoric from his new book
quoted above.

In the year the Gelbart article was published, Frenkel was
a senior in high school. The year was 1984.

For some remarks of my own that mention
that year, see a search for 1984 in this journal.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Twelfth Step

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:59 am

Continued from 24 hours ago.

From this morning's 6 AM (ET) post

"… you never made a Twelfth Step
call on an active alcoholic by yourself,
unless the alkie in question was safely
incarcerated in a hospital, detox, or the
local bughouse."

— Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

Related material from a math addict, a likely victim
of a professor's misleading rhetoric —

"Frenkel is the real deal, a professor at Berkeley…."

— "Math Porn Update" by David Justice,
       Nov. 20, 2013

The rhetoric link above leads to remarks by Frenkel.
For a similar professor's earlier misleading remarks,
see Barry Mazur in this journal.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Quad Rants

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:00 am

IMAGE- 'Development of Mathematics in the Nineteenth Century,' by Felix Klein

"… the message is clear on what is the main
accomplishment of 19th [century] mathematics:
complex function theory, comprising almost half
the book. The heart and soul of this theory is the
theory of elliptic functions and its generalisations
(abelian functions, elliptic modular functions,
automorphic functions)."

Viktor Blasjo, Feb. 27, 2006:

Tune for an entertainer —

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Quad*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:29 am

IMAGE- The Klein Four-Group, 'Vierergruppe': the group's four elements in four colors. Blue, red, green arrows represent pairs of transpositions, and the four black points, viewed as stationary, represent the identity.

* Update of 8 PM Nov. 19:
   The title refers to a work by Beckett.
  "There is nothing outside itself that Quad
   might be about." — Sue Wilson.
   The Klein group is not so limited.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Teleportation Web?

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 8:45 pm

"In this book, I will describe one of the biggest ideas
to come out of mathematics in the last fifty years:
the Langlands Program, considered by many as
the Grand Unified Theory of mathematics. It’s a
fascinating theory that weaves a web of tantalizing
connections between mathematical fields that
at first glance seem to be light years apart:
algebra, geometry, number theory, analysis
,
and quantum physics. If we think of those fields as
continents in the hidden world of mathematics, then
the Langlands Program is the ultimate teleportation
device, capable of getting us instantly from one of
them to another, and back."

— Edward Frenkel, excerpt from his new book
     in today's online New York Times  

The four areas of pure mathematics that Frenkel
names do not, of course, seem to be "light years
apart" to those familiar with the development of
mathematics in the nineteenth century.

Related material:  Sunday morning's post.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

The X-Men Tree

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:59 am

Continued from November 12, 2013. A post on that date
showed the tree from Waiting for Godot  along with the two
X-Men patriarchs. See also last night's Chapel post,
which shows a more interesting tree—

A recent book on the Langlands program by Edward Frenkel
repeats a metaphor about building a bridge  between unrelated
worlds within mathematics. A review of the Frenkel book by
Marcus du Sautoy replaces the bridge  metaphor with a wormhole .
Some users of such metaphors seem to feel they are justified, 
for maximum rhetorical effect, in lying about the unrelatedness of
the worlds being connected. The connections they discuss are
surprising (see the Eichler function discussed by Frenkel and
du Sautoy), but the connections occur, at least in the case of
elliptic curves and modular forms, between areas of mathematics
long known to be, in less subtle ways, related. See remarks
from 2005 by Diamond and Shurman below.

Related material:

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Mathematics and Rhetoric

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Jim Holt in the current (Dec. 5) New York Review of Books

One form of Eros is the sexual desire aroused by the physical beauty of a particular beloved person. That, according to Diotima, is the lowest form. With philosophical refinement, however, Eros can be made to ascend toward loftier and loftier objects. The penultimate of these—just short of the Platonic idea of beauty itself—is the perfect and timeless beauty discovered by the mathematical sciences. Such beauty evokes in those able to grasp it a desire to reproduce—not biologically, but intellectually, by begetting additional “gloriously beautiful ideas and theories.” For Diotima, and presumably for Plato as well, the fitting response to mathematical beauty is the form of Eros we call love.

Consider (for example) the beauty of the rolling donut

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/11117-HypercubeFromMIQELdotcom.gif
            (Animation source: MIQEL.com)

Friday, December 10, 2010

Cruel Star, Part II

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

Symmetry, Duality, and Cinema

— Title of a Paris conference held June 17, 2010

From that conference, Edward Frenkel on symmetry and duality

"Symmetry plays an important role in geometry, number theory, and quantum physics. I will discuss the links between these areas from the vantage point of the Langlands Program. In this context 'duality' means that the same theory, or category, may be described in two radically different ways. This leads to many surprising consequences."

Related material —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101210-CruelStarPartII.jpg

See also  "Black Swan" in this journal, Ingmar Bergman's production of Yukio Mishima's "Madame de Sade," and Duality and Symmetry, 2001.

This journal on the date of the Paris conference
had a post, "Nighttown," with some remarks about
the duality of darkness and light. Its conclusion—

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
      Random House, 1973, page 118

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Cruel Star

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:23 am

This morning's New York Times  obituaries describe a memoir titled "Under a Cruel Star."

This is not  the story of Kayshonne Insixieng May, who appears with mathematics professor Edward Frenkel in his recent homage to Yukio Mishima, "Rites of Love and Math." (See press kit pdf.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101209-Frenkel.jpg

Mathematics Professor Edward Frenkel

For further details, see yesterday's East Bay Express

Erotica, Intrigue, and Arithmetic in 'Rites of Love and Math'
Berkeley professor Edward Frenkel brings his passion for math
to the masses — by starring in an erotic film.

Professor Frenkel also appears in last Saturday's post "Forgive Us Our Transgressions."

Related material —

“I carry the past inside me like an accordion, like a book of picture postcards that people bring home as souvenirs from foreign cities, small and neat,” she wrote in her memoir. “But all it takes is to lift one corner of the top card for an endless snake to escape, zigzag joined to zigzag, the sign of the viper, and instantly all the pictures line up before my eyes.”

Today's New York Times  on Heda Kovaly, author of Under a Cruel Star

See also the endless snake in a post from last Sunday, the day of Kovaly's death.

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